


no escape from the things i've done

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Grant Ward Redemption, Past Kara Lynn Palamas/Grant Ward - Freeform, Past Will Daniels/Jemma Simmons - Freeform, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:53:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25388599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Conversations in Grant's quarters.
Relationships: Jemma Simmons/Grant Ward
Comments: 12
Kudos: 77





	no escape from the things i've done

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "the truth" by James Blunt.

Afterward, there’s a moment when they’re lying side-by-side but not touching, each of them so deep in their own heads they might as well be in separate rooms—or separate planets. Grant didn’t know to watch for it the first time, but now he knows what it means when she draws in a long, heavy breath. Her eyes are shut, her expression just barely showing the pain that’s been missing all these weeks. In a second, when she releases that breath, she’ll throw her legs over the side of the bed, set her feet on the cold floor, and even though she’ll still need to find her clothes, she’ll be long gone in every way that matters.

“You wanna talk about it?” he asks.

Somehow, when she wasn’t moving to begin with, she freezes. Slowly her eyes open and she fixes him with one of her most judgmental looks. It would make him feel better if she weren’t so obviously using it as a mask.

“Talk about _what_?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugs and continues the motion to lift his arms up and lace his hands behind his head. Maybe it’s a little too casual, but he worries she’s forgotten how social cues work after six months in isolation. “But I figure there’s something. Last time we saw each other before…” He keeps his eyes on the ceiling, letting her flinch without imagining his judgment. “You tried to kill me. Now you’re here. I’m guessing there’s a reason.”

For a long minute they lay there in silence. Him picking out patterns that aren’t there in the ceiling. Her seeing … something else. He doesn’t know what. If he did, he wouldn’t have to ask.

“There is,” she says finally, with just enough emotion he thinks maybe- “I’m here for a decent fuck. If I wanted conversation, I’d knock on the door of someone who I actually _like_.”

She swings her legs over the side of the bed. Her feet hit the cold floor. She grabs up her clothes, shoves herself into them, and leaves. The only reason she doesn’t slam the door behind her is probably that she knows someone might come to check out the noise.

Once she’s gone and taken her anger with her, Grant, still staring at the ceiling, lets himself chuckle.

.

The first night Simmons showed up at his door, she was all dressed up. Not anything flashy—that’s not her style and there still aren’t too many of her old clothes she fits into again yet—but she clearly put some effort into her appearance. The makeup couldn’t hide the haunted look in her eyes when she stared at him across the threshold. She stared so long and looked so close to losing it, he almost thought about calling for help. (All his qualifications for handling the mentally unstable involve bullets and, four months into his new tenure on the team, he knew this scenario was likely to be blamed on him, casualties or no.)

“Are you going to kill us?” she asked finally.

“No,” he said right away. The truth. And a lie. He has no plans to kill Simmons or Fitz. Coulson and Daisy and Mackenzie are uncertain, depends how things play out. May and Hunter and Morse, them he’ll cross off when the opportunity presents itself.

She nodded to herself like she expected that answer but it wasn’t the one she wanted. He thought that might’ve been the end of it and started to close the door on her, but she pushed right in. For a second it was like fighting, like defending himself from an attack. Feet tangled up, trying to find stability; hands reaching, catching, holding; bodies taking up the same space, each trying for some kind of dominance. The door shut—his elbow or her foot, he wasn’t sure—and he got a hold on her hip and one arm to push her into the wall next to it.

“Fuck me,” she sighed. Then she met his eyes and said it again, making it clear it was a request and not a curse. Or maybe it had been one and she just thought it was a good idea. He really didn’t know and he didn’t care.

Afterward, when she sighed and her feet hit the floor, he watched her get dressed (she avoided his stare the whole time) and wondered just what the hell happened on that date with Fitz to send her here.

.

So he laughs. Because it's funny to think that the guy who’s been mooning over Simmons for years couldn’t satisfy her.

But he knows that’s not really what brought her to his door.

,

“— _shit_. Fuck.” Grant holds himself still, his whole body shaking between the physical desire to finish what he started and the emotional one to put a bullet in his own skull.

Beneath him, Simmons doesn’t move except to slowly, almost gently, lift her hands from his shoulders. Her legs stay wrapped around his hips until he shifts. She doesn’t complain, doesn’t try to draw him back because she came here for sex, not to watch him have a nervous breakdown. She just lets him go.

He sits on the edge of the bed and buries his face in his hands. “ _Fuck_.”

He called her _baby_. Not because he forgot Kara or he’s replacing her—he could never. He just … forgot. Forgot she was dead. Forgot for a second it was Simmons he was-

“It’s not you,” he says, eyes closed, one hand—the right because the left still has that tracking bracelet that always reminds him he’s working with the people who are _fucking responsible_ —still pressing into that space between his eyebrows like he thinks if he digs his knuckles in hard enough it might penetrate his thick skull that Kara’s _dead_. “I just-”

He feels her shift. Up onto one elbow so she can get a better angle to study him like he’s one of her goddamn science experiments.

“You were thinking of Agent Palamas.”

“She wasn’t an agent.” He says it a little too quick, a little too mean.

She shifts again, onto her back like before. He thinks maybe between his shitty attitude and the pretending—even unwillingly—that she was another woman and the whole not satisfying her thing, she’ll leave. But she doesn’t.

“You’re right. She wasn’t and I shouldn’t remember her that way.” Another pause. She sounds like she really is sorry. At least someone is. “I don’t mind. If you think of her, I mean. I’m not always thinking of you.”

She’s staring at the ceiling, hands laced tightly on her stomach. The guilt shining in her eyes is a little too familiar, so he tells his own guilt and shame and jealousy to stuff it and climbs back on top of her.

He keeps his eyes on her face the whole time, so he won’t forget again.

She closes hers.

.

Eyes closed. Deep breath. Time for goodbye. Not that she ever bothers to say it.

“Hunger—real hunger—makes you stupid,” she says. Out of the blue like he suddenly tuned in in the middle of a lecture. “Your body gets so loud, your brain just lets it take over.”

He waits through her silence, figuring this has to be going somewhere.

“I need my body to be loud. Otherwise I think about … things. That’s why I’m here.”

“With me,” he says. Half a statement, half a question.

Her mouth thins, fighting something like a smile. “I know Fitz would- would be happy to-”

“Would be _over the fucking moon_.”

“Yes. Quite. But if I do that—if I let him take me out again and romance me and take me to bed—then we’ll get married.”

Grant’s heart jolts at the sudden escalation. “Man, Fitz moves fast.”

“We’ve been friends and partners for more than a decade. There will be no going slow, no wading into the shallow end to test the waters. Once we begin, we’ll have to swim.”

The way she says it, she almost sounds resigned. Like there’d be no choice for either of them.

“Sooner rather than later we’d be married. Find a flat, then a house for the children. There would be a garden with flowers and room for a dog. Big, sunlit rooms for family nights and meals and having friends over.”

“And you … _don’t_ want that?” It sure sounds like she does, but if she wants the house and the kids and the dog then why would she be dragging her feet by scratching her itch here with him?

“I do,” she says with more emotion than he’s heard from her since she got back. “But not with Fitz. With-” She shakes her head. “But I know that I can have all the rest if I’m with him. It’s all right there for the taking. Which wouldn’t be fair to him; using him, making him think I want him when it’s really the everything else that I want. So, you see, that’s why I’m with you.”

There’s an insult in there somewhere, a reminder she doesn’t care about Grant’s feelings. But it’s not like he ever asked her to.

She takes that breath again and he knows that this time she’ll go like she always does. He stops her with a brush of his fingers against her arm. His hand presses down into the mattress, giving him leverage to throw one leg over hers. She arches a brow in question.

“You admitted why you’re here. I think Dr. Garner would agree that kind of progress deserves a reward.” He shifts his knees, awkwardly walking them back along her thighs down to near her ankles. He pauses, body low over her legs, and sees her face framed between her breasts. “A re- _Ward_.”

She gives him a variation on her most judgmental look, this one softened by that sparkle he used to see in her eye back on the Bus when it was just the two of them talking in the lab. “How many women have you used that on?”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been waiting _years_ for the right opportunity.”

The sound of her laughter is almost as good as the moans that follow it.

.

For the first time ever, Grant thinks he’s more of a wreck than Simmons is. May got shot. Not by him—by some telekinetic with a pain fetish because that’s just what they need—but he was _right there_. She was so close the blood splatter hit him.

He caught her when she fell. She thanked him later. So did Coulson. So did everyone—with their eyes if not their words. None of them could believe that he saved her life, supported her out of that building, got her to medical before she bled out.

“Kara was May,” he says. Afterward. Simmons is still breathing heavy beside him. He can still feel her on his skin. But this can’t wait. “When she—was shot. She was using May’s face again because she knew May was in the building and she could get closer to SHIELD. And she got shot.”

He lets the blanks speak for themselves. He sure as hell can’t fill them in.

That’s why he saved May today. Because she wasn’t May, not to him, not while his mind was eight months and an ocean away.

Simmons’ hand finds his on the bed. She says, “His name was Will Daniels,” and she tells him a story no one else in the whole world knows, one that ends with a heroic sacrifice and a stolen corpse and an “And it’s all my fault.”

She wipes viciously at the tears that have leaked from the corners of her eyes into her hair. One-handed because her other is still holding his. She doesn’t leave for a long time.

.

“You’re wrong,” he says the next time. She’s only half-undressed and they’ve barely made it to the bed, but he wants her to hear this. He can’t. He knows what he did. But Simmons can at least have a little reprieve from her guilt.

“Am I?” She sits her weight back on her hips. He holds them tight to keep her balanced on his knees. His thumbs stroke her soft skin. She’s filling out, gaining back that weight she lost. The first time they were together she was all exposed ribs and sharp bones, enough it almost hurt to touch her. Now he can’t stop himself.

“It’s not your fault, what happened to Daniels.”

She stiffens and he knows she’d get up and walk out if he weren’t stopping her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

There’s a warning in her voice to back off, leave this subject alone. He’s never been too good about warnings. “And _you_ don’t know _guys_. You know those stories? The really romantic ones where the hero sacrifices himself to save the girl he loves?”

Her mouth is a thin line. Her whole body’s shaking against him. He can see in her face she wants to run, she wants to hit him, she wants to curl up and cry.

“Those stories are told by _men_. Because we want that. Every little boy wants to save the princess and be a hero. And every man knows there’s no better way to say _I love you_ than self-sacrifice.” He pushes aside thoughts of Kara and what he owed her. “It’s dumb and reckless and that’s why it’s us doing it and not you. You’re smarter than we are.”

Tomorrow Grant’s gonna have bruises on his shoulders from how tight Simmons is holding on. “So you’re saying,” she says slowly, “that I caused his death by giving him this- this _fantasy_ to play out.”

“No. I’m saying you gave him a death with _meaning_. You said he had one bullet left?”

She nods once, stiffly.

“He was never gonna use it on himself. He couldn’t. He failed his team and he needed to make that right before the end. So he’s got one bullet left to use on this unkillable thing, he knows it’s not gonna avenge anybody and he’ll probably wind up dead for his trouble. It was always gonna happen that way. The only difference in how it actually played out was you. He couldn’t kill the monster or save his team, but he could save you. He could do what every little boy dreams of doing. And he knew it mattered.” Grant shrugs because he doubts she can see his smile through her tears. “Not a bad way to go.”

There’s no afterward tonight. She cries in his arms and for the first time falls asleep in his bed. And if, after she’s tired herself out, he hears her say, “It wasn’t your fault either. You didn’t know,” she’s probably just talking in her sleep.

.

The problem with sleeping together— _really_ sleeping—is that they’re both severely fucked up.

He knows he wakes up silent from even his worst nightmares, just a natural self-preservation instinct after years living in the woods and even more years of covert work. But it’s a kick in the teeth when Simmons does it.

He never knew how it felt, knowing the other person in bed just woke up from something so damn scary they should be screaming their head off, but they’re perfectly still and quiet next to you. It’s like she’s some animal who thinks the danger’s still here, in the waking world, waiting in the shadows to swallow her up.

When it’s him, he likes to pull her in his arms and breathe in the scent of her to anchor himself in reality. So he does the same now. Holds her until he can feel her shake, then still, then say, “It was in his body. Chasing me.”

“Fuck it,” he says into her ear. “It’s a million lightyears away with no door back. You’re safe.”

The tension holding her like a bowstring releases slowly. She relaxes against his chest, back to what he can only hope will be better dreams.

“I’ll kill anything that hurts you,” he promises, hoping it’ll help her subconscious settle down. And it just might, she doesn’t wake again until morning, when her alarm wakes her to slip out before the rest of the base wakes up.

He knows. He stays up all night to be sure.

.

“Bobbi knows.”

Grant pushes himself right up on his elbows, his post-sex bliss completely shot. “ _What._ How the fuck could she know?”

She narrows her eyes at his language. “It’s my six month anniversary. Or it was.” She frowns at the clock and the 2:30 reminding them how late they got to bed after the party the others threw to celebrate six months since she got free of that hell planet.

But that can’t be how Morse found out, she was pissed before the party even started.

“I think she only did it as an excuse to keep me out of the way so they could set up and surprise me. But Bobbi insisted I needed a follow-up physical.”

Shit.

Grant’s been careful not to leave marks on her where the others might see. Not hard when she dresses so conservatively. But that means all the marks he _does_ leave are in pretty telling places. Like the one he left two nights ago between her thighs. Not really any other explanation for that.

“So she knows you’re having sex,” he says.

“With you.”

“Did you tell her you’re having sex with me?”

Her judgmental look is back. “Did she murder you?”

He grins. “So she doesn’t know it’s me. She just knows you’re having sex with _someone_ and it can’t be Fitz because he’s still chasing you like a lovesick puppy.”

“He is not. He knows that door is closed.”

Yeah, sure he does.

“But you’re right, Bobbi likely hasn’t put it together. You are the last man in the world I’m likely to involve myself with.”

He lays a hand over his heart. “Ouch.”

“I suppose we’ll have to be sneakier.”

Sneakier than only ever saying more than five words to each other in his bedroom in the middle of the night?

“Or,” he says, lifting a finger like he’s just come up with the most brilliant idea, “I could offer to help Fitz out by seducing you away from this random guy you’re sleeping with.”

“What.”

“No, no. It’s great. Everyone knows I’m the ‘last man in the world’ you’re gonna fall in love with. So I turn your head just enough to get you away from this mystery guy, you realize you hate me forever, and then Fitz is there to comfort you.”

“I don’t _want_ Fitz to comfort me.”

“Right, but the others don’t know that.”

She laughs. “And how do you expect to avoid being murdered when I _don’t_ leave you for Fitz?”

“I figure there are two options: either they think I brainwashed you and I have to flee for my life-”

“And leave me? Pass.”

“-or they think you fell in love with me and they love you too much to kill me and break your heart. I admit it’s the less likely option, but it’s the one where I don’t die, so it’s the one I like best.”

He expects a witty response but she just stares at him, dragging out the moment until he feels uncomfortable under her placid smile.

“Or we could be sneakier,” she says again, erasing the last couple minutes of conversation.

“You’ve never been good at sneaky,” he reminds her.

“I’ve managed so far.” She drapes herself across his chest, stopping just short of kissing him. “And if I had a good teacher with an inventive system of rewards…”

He squeezes her ass, making her arch her back and bite her lip. “Oh, I think we can find you one.”

.

He feels her weight in his arms, against his chest. The soft brush of her fingertips along the scar she sewed up after his first suicide attempt. She follows the path from his elbow to his wrist, where the skin is extra sensitive now the tracking bracelet’s gone and that wakes him right up.

“Aw, shit,” he says.

She shakes against him, doing a piss poor job of hiding her laughter.

“Tell me I finished.” He’s propped up against his headboard, in the same position he can remember from when she climbed in his lap. And that’s about the _last_ thing he remembers.

“ _I_ finished. You fell asleep.”

He tries to bury his face in her shoulder, but she sits up to face him. Apparently done with his arm, her fingers find his cheek.

She likes to touch him. He used to think it might’ve been that that brought her to his door—the need for simple, human connection after months on her own—now he thinks she just needs to be reminded sometimes that losing Daniels didn’t leave her unable to make connections again.

He doesn’t hate it. He’s had his own brushes with extreme isolation and, after a three hour mission turned into three days and so many twists and turns he’s still feeling dizzy, he can’t say he’s not feeling the same.

He tips his cheek against her hand, dragging the stubble over her skin. He can see red spots coming in on her neck and collarbone. He at least made a little progress before he conked out.

“You hate it?” Even if he hadn’t been too tired to shave by the time his debrief was over, there wasn’t much point. Still, if it bothers her…

“No. I like it. I’ve always liked- liked men with beards.” That little hitch means she’s thinking about Daniels.

Grant wraps his hand around her back, stretches his fingers as far as he can like he’s measuring her. “So what you’re saying,” he says, dragging her into his lap again, “is that you still found me attractive when I was in Vault D.”

“No.”

“I’m why you like beards.”

“No.”

“I gave you a kink.”

“No!” She pushes him back into the headboard, her eyes dancing mischievously. She glances down between them. “Think you can stay awake this time or do I have to do everything myself?”

Usually a challenge like that would have him drawing on every reserve he has to meet it. But his mind is suddenly hours and miles away, in a room with one of the last old school heads of Hydra and-

“ _Must I do everything myself? … I want what is_ mine _.”_

Grant brushes the hair back from her face. She knows him too well. He’s playing this too gentle, too soft, too much like goodbye. She opens her mouth to speak, concern in every inch of her. He wraps his hand around the back of her neck and pulls her in for a kiss so not-gentle, so not-soft that she forgets all about the other thing—if she ever even knew it was there.

.

Afterward, Jemma wakes to an empty bed and the boom of distant explosions.

Afterward, Coulson shows them footage of Ward fleeing the base.

Afterward, they learn of the Inhuman the others encountered on their last mission, the one Hydra worships. The one from another world, who Ward betrayed them to serve.

Afterward, Jemma stands in his room, in front of his mirror, not really seeing the marks left on her skin. She’s thinking of Kara Palamas and everything Ward knows that no one else does and how long these marks will take to fade.

Afterward-

There is no after Ward, she thinks. He’s gone off to slay the monster, to make right what he failed at with Kara, to save the girl. His betrayal is a ruse, likely cooked up with Coulson to take advantage of a mission gone horribly wrong.

Everything is repeating itself. Everything is so much the same. Even that moment last night when she almost said…

“No,” she says to the mirror. “This won’t be like Will. Not again.” There won’t be an after Ward. Because he is going to come home.


End file.
